Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Back when I was collecting comics, I usually purchased based on pictorial quality, and not for the story writing. Comic book stories have usually seemed to me to be silly, simplistic or just downright stupid. Now don't get me wrong, that's part of the charm of being all-in-color-for-a-dime. But as comics evolved to become seemingly more 'mature' and certainly more expensive, I had greater expectations for the story quality.

EC comics in the '50s are consistently lauded as having had great art and great writing. Yeah, the art was pretty great, and the writing by Kurtzman and the Bradbury adaptations and a few others was way cool. But a lot of the stuff was predictable and silly, even though way above other comics of the time.

In the '80s, beyond the superhero genre, comics took on adult appeal more and more. Art was racier and of pretty good quality, but many of the stories were either retreads and/or just plain lame. I had great expectations from series like Alien Worlds and others. Here, Al Williamson's art was as good or better than his EC work and very reminiscent of those days, and the writing tries to be — but ends up being a tired old retread (writer to go unnamed here). You can see why some of us buy comics just for the art. REALLY good writing examples in this medium are just few and far between.

Sometime soon, I hope to post some samples of what I think is some really good comic book writing, superhero, no less. Stay 'tooned.

Monday, February 18, 2013

In the Golden Age of illustration, even prosaic adverts, usually for women's products, utilized storybook renderings to raise them to poetic beauty. In this case the illustrator was Gwynedd Hudson, far more known for her Alice in Wonderland and Peter Pan books.

Sunday, February 17, 2013

With all the remakes and re-envisioning of old films and books, I'm surprised that a 21st century version of T.H.White's Arthurian/Merlinesque adventures hasn't been made ala Lord of the Rings' digital film magic.

The musical Camelot was based somewhat on White's Once and Future King, and Disney did the animated Sword in the Stone, but it would be nice to see a faithful version of White's unique version translated to the screen. And, of course, Alan Lee should be the visionary for it, as he partly was for Peter Jackson's LoTR.

I know, at this point it would be like one more Gandalf or Dumbledore, even though Merlin was the original once and future wizard, and isn't there room for more in our collective imagination?

Friday, February 15, 2013

I love working as a designer. It's fulfilling to see something emerge from nothing. And it's a useful trade as well, as just about everything you see around you had to be designed by someone. Even circus parades are aided with design:

This is an intriguing illustration, considering it's from a kid's book of the 1920s/30s. It ran under the title, "When the world was 1000 years younger," and the caption, "An Arab Storyteller Entertaining the Caliph of Bagdad."

Thursday, February 14, 2013

One of our long time good friends that we met via the Whirled of Kelly blog is OtherEric of the Digital Comic Museum, who has here sent over some Frank Frazetta material. Most Frazetta fans know that Fritz was a comic book artist early in his career. It's sort of amazing to see his early funny animal cartoons when you know that he gave us sublime fantasy paintings in the bulk of his career.

These are some text illustrations from 1947 comic books, such as Happy Comics, CooCoo Comics and Goofy Comics. As cute as these are, Fate (in the guise of Roy Krenkel) made the right path for Frazetta, to help him land his Ace Paperback painting commissions.

Tuesday, February 12, 2013

Today's post on the ever-intriguing Histories of Things to Come reminds us that this is Charles Darwin's birthday, thus reminding me that I had a couple of Darwinesqe items in the scan file just waiting to be posted. There's a relevant page on the Pictorial Arts Journal.

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About Me

My name is Thom Buchanan.
I'm an artist and photographer.
People are my favorite subjects to portray in art and photos. My wife (and studio partner) has called that my 'people skills', as I've been passionately creating portrait studies for many years.
I refer to myself as a pictorialist, a combination of image-making and journalist. Images are my life.